Declan Rice has revealed to Monday Night Football, which was broadcast on Sky Sports, that West Ham United’s players were telling each other to ‘wake up’ after Leeds United’s fast start yesterday.
Leeds had two goals disallowed in the opening 10 minutes, as they pushed hard to score early on.
Marcelo Bielsa’s men were rather unfortunate that Helder Costa was adjudged to have been marginally offside, otherwise they would have had a lead to protect.
And Rice admits that West Ham’s players were taken aback by how well Leeds started the game.
“Leeds caused us problems,” he admitted. “First 10 they came out really, really sharp and had two disallowed goals. As players on the pitch we knew we had to wake ourselves up and get into the game.
“Once the first goal came we settled down and now we’re starting to learn to win ugly.
“Being a 10 day break between the last game and tonight going into was always tough as you’re so used to playing every three or four days.
“But as players on the pitch we said to each other we need to wake up, they could be 1-0 or 2-0 up.
“And where we want to finish this season, if they had been one or two up, it would have been a hard way to come back against Leeds.”
Unfortunately for Leeds, they were unable to continue to keep up their pressure.
West Ham did begin to settle eventually, and some slack defending let them into the game.
Luke Ayling gave away a penalty when he clumsily tripped Jesse Lingard, before Craig Dawson crashed home a header from a corner.
Leeds actually did push hard to find a route back into the game, but they were poor in front of the West Ham goal, and their inability to take their chances cost them in the end.
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